• Mormon church OK with ending Boy Scouts' ban on gay youth

    Richard W. Rodriguez/AP file

    Boy Scouts hold signs at the "Save Our Scouts" prayer vigil and rally in front of the Boy Scouts of America' national headquarters in Irving, Texas, on Feb. 6, 2013.

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has given tacit approval to the Boy Scouts’ proposal to allow gay youth to join, saying they “appreciate the positive things” included in the plan to end the organization's controversial ban on gay boys.

    The Boy Scouts of America last week proposed allowing gay youth – but not adults – to participate in the private youth organization. That came two months after they floated the idea of allowing gays and lesbians of all ages to join, a proposal that was denounced by the conservative religious groups that make up a bulk of Scouting.

    “We are grateful to BSA for their careful consideration of these issues. We appreciate the positive things contained in this current proposal that will help build and strengthen the moral character and leadership skills of youth as we work together in the future,” the LDS church said Thursday in a statement posted to their website.

    “The current BSA proposal constructively addresses a number of important issues that have been part of the ongoing dialogue, including consistent standards for all BSA partners, recognition that Scouting exists to serve and benefit youth rather than Scout leaders, a single standard of moral purity for youth in the program, and a renewed emphasis for Scouts to honor their duty to God."

    The Mormon church tops the list of membership enrollment numbers, with 431,000 youths participating in LDS-sponsored units as of Dec. 31, 2012. That was followed by the United Methodist Church at 364,000 and the Catholic Church at 274,000. More than 70 percent of Scouting units are chartered to faith-based groups.

    The Boy Scouts said Thursday in a statement that it was pleased the LDS church was “satisfied that the BSA has made a thoughtful, good-faith effort to address this issue.”

    “For nearly 100 years we have worked together with the mutual goal of building the moral character and leadership skills of youth. We believe kids are better off when they are in Scouting, and the program is successful because of its relationships with valued chartered organizations like the Church,” the statement said.

    The Boy Scouts’ policy has increasingly been a sore spot for the organization over the last year, following the dismissal of a den leader because she is a lesbian and the denial of the Eagle Scout rank to a California teen because he is gay.

    The BSA’s National Council will vote on changing the membership policy on May 23. Its biannual “The Voice of the Scout Survey,” conducted earlier this year, for the first time included questions on gay membership.

    Among the 280 administrative local councils, half recommended no change, 38 percent recommended a change and 14 percent took a neutral position, the Scouts said.

    "While perspectives and opinions vary significantly, parents, adults in the Scouting community and teens alike tend to agree that youth should not be denied the benefits of Scouting," the organization said last week in a statement.

    If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the BSA's proposed change to the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

  • American Indian tribe OKs same-sex marriage, lets gay couple wed

    John Flesher / AP

    Tim LaCroix, left, and Gene Barfield recite their nuptial vows in the governmental building of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Friday, March 15, 2013, in Harbor Springs, Mich. Tribal Chairman Dexter McNamara, center, officiated during the wedding after signing a measure approved by the tribal council that allows same-sex marriages on the reservation.

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

    The head of an American Indian tribe in Michigan signed a law approving same-sex marriage on Friday, joining at least two other tribes nationwide in doing so, then immediately wed a gay couple who had been together for 30 years but never thought they would see this day come.

    Dexter McNamara, chairman of the 4,600-member Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in northern Michigan, and a member of the tribe wed Tim LaCroix, 53, and Gene Barfield, 60, of Boyne City. McNamara read the couple's vows and led the ceremony in English, and the tribe member conducted a traditional tribal ceremony in their language before dozens of wellwishers.

    “I’m proud of my tribe for doing this and I love my husband,” LaCroix said. Barfield, who is not a tribe member, chimed in:"How could the world be better? … I'm just ... full of joy and happiness and I love my husband."

    A maple sapling, bent into a hoop with cedar, sage, tobacco and sweetgrass tied to it, was used in the tribal ceremony. The sweetgrass was lit, and the hoop was waved up and down over the couple to ward off evil spirits and bring in good spirits.

    “To have Tim’s tribal community, which are an ancient people, welcome me into their midst and …that we are welcome as a married couple in a community, I’m just flabbergasted at how good this makes me feel,” Barfield said, chuckling as he later added, “This goes to prove that the great American author Mark Twain was right: all things come to him who waits and doesn’t die in the meantime."

    It was not certain the tribe would recognize same-sex marriage: In 2012, the tribal council voted down a resolution, 5-4, to allow gays and lesbians to wed, but on March 3, the balance shifted and it was approved, 5-4. The resolution, which requires one member of the marrying couples to be a tribe member, then went to the desk of McNamara, who figured that if he vetoed it, the legislation would be unlikely to get the seven votes needed for an override.

    While he was mulling his decision, McNamara said LaCroix called and asked him what he was going to do. They and Barfield had once worked together for the tribe.

    “I started thinking about it, and that’s when I decided that, you know, we all deserve to be happy," he said, "and everybody is happy in different ways, they show their love in different ways, and I decided to sign it.”

    The newlyweds said that after McNamara signed the legislation, he received a standing ovation.

    "I’ve always felt that there’s two ways to do things and look at things … you believe in equal rights or you want to discriminate," McNamara said Thursday, noting he'd received mainly positive feedback in response to the decision.

    Courtesy of Annette VanDeCar, Li

    Tim LaCroix holds a feather while hugging Gene Barfield after their marriage ceremony on Friday. Both are part of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

    Two other tribes -- the Coquille in Oregon and the Suquamish in Washington state -- have in recent years approved same-sex marriage. Other tribes -- perhaps from five to 10, though there could be more -- have open ordinances that don't define marriage as between a man and a woman, said Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at Michigan State University College of Law and director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center.

    "It's pretty remarkable," Fletcher, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, said of the tribe's action. "I mean Indian Country is mostly rural and insular and pretty conservative, so it's unusual for a rural community like this to sort of stick their necks out like this, but it gives you a sense of where I think we are as a nation in terms of being much more open toward same-sex marriage in a fairly short period of time."

    However, large tribes, such as the Cherokee Nation and Navajo Nation, ban same-sex marriage. The Cherokee Nation took action when a lesbian couple sought the right to marry in tribal court. The pair was ultimately successful in 2006 though the ban was imposed, scholars said.

    In smaller tribes, such as the Coquille and Suquamish, people know one another and so legally excluding same-sex couples has a more significant impact socially and politically rather than with a large tribe like the Cherokee, who have a big bureaucracy and are aiming to behave more like a nation-state, said Brian Joseph Gilley, a professor of anthropology and head of the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center at Indiana University, Bloomington.

    The impact of the Little Traverse Bay decision was unclear, though Fletcher said he thought it would carry weight with other tribes. Little Traverse Bay was an influential, average-sized tribe that has been, along with some other Michigan tribes, "very much in the forefront of some good progressive tribal governance measures in the last couple decades."


    "I do think it’s going to be influential," he said of the decision, "and it’s sort of a groundswell building in Indian Country that’s a little bit slower than the rest of the country, but it’s definitely building."

    McNamara, who said it was an "historic" day for the tribe, agreed, saying he thought other tribes in the state might take their lead.

    “We’ve been a role model, I think, for the federally recognized tribes of Michigan and it seems like we’re out in front -- and not taking anything away from the other federally recognized tribes -- but, you know, it seems like we kind of opened the door for other tribes and I think other tribes will follow," he said.

    Nine states plus the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, while more than 30 ban it, including Michigan -- where that law will apply outside the reservation. The Supreme Court in less than two weeks will hear cases challenging California's same-sex marriage ban, known as Proposition 8, and the federal law (Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA) barring recognition of same-sex couples.

    The federal law applies to tribes, too, said Melissa Tatum, director of the Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy Program at the University of Arizona. It is up to each tribe -- there are nearly 570 -- to decide where they fall on this issue, she said.

    "Some tribes have a culture and a history of accepting same-sex relationships and they don’t view it as anything unusual or different and some tribes have, like many states … they don’t have a culture of accepting it," she said. "Just like within the state populations you’re going to get the whole spectrum of attitudes in favor and against it in tribal governments."

    Whether a tribal government accepted such marriages was "not just based on changing social opinions but based on tribal culture," she added. "Tribes who take control of their own laws, who make culturally appropriate decisions about what their government policies are going to be, have far and away more successful, more stable tribal government."

    Related:

    GOP sea change on gay rights?

    Clint Eastwood to Supreme Court: Drop California's ban on same-sex marriage

    US asks Supreme Court to strike down law denying benefits to same-sex couples

     

  • Obama's Supreme Court brief on same-sex marriage will have little impact: experts

    Beck Diefenbach / Reuters file

    Gay marriage supporters cheer during a rally moments before hearing that Proposition 8 had been overturned outside the Ninth Circuit Courthouse in San Francisco, Calif., on Feb. 7, 2012. A federal court later declined an appeal to revisit California's gay marriage ban in June, clearing the way for the Supreme Court to consider whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution.

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Gay rights groups cheered the Obama administration’s weighing in on a landmark Supreme Court case to allow same-sex marriage, while opponents decried the move as “war.”

    But ultimately, constitutional and Supreme Court scholars say the government’s action of filing a legal brief on Thursday in support of repealing California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, will have little impact on the outcome of the case though it would carry some symbolic meaning.

    Previous administrations have weighed in on cases brought to the nation’s highest court in which they were not directly involved -- such as the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies over the desegregation of schools, and the Reagan administration urging the justices to overrule the legalization of abortion, said Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor and author of “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage.”

    “I don’t think that the government’s brief (on Prop. 8) would be that influential and I don’t say that because I think in general that’s the case, but I think everybody already knew what the administration’s position was,” he told NBC News.

    “The president has made this such a salient issue and has been so clear about his position that I don’t think the brief really adds anything that we didn’t know,” he added, referring to Obama’s calls since last May for same-sex couples to have the right to marry, including his reference to the issue in his 2013 inaugural address.

    Obama administration steps into gay marriage battle

    The justices will hear oral arguments on Prop. 8 on March 26, with a decision expected in June.

    In the legal filing, the Justice Department went further than the California case and suggested it was unconstitutional to block gay couples from getting married in at least seven other states where civil unions are offered instead. Those states, the department said, violate the Constitution if they offer civil unions to gay couples but deny them the right to marry.

    While the administration takes no position in its brief beyond those states, its reasoning would have even broader implications. If the administration's legal theory were ultimately accepted, no state could, under constitutional guarantees against discrimination, deny same sex couples the right to marry.

    But the administration is technically not a litigant to the Prop. 8 case, like it is in the other case that the justices will hear in late March over the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law barring recognition of same-sex couples.

    G. Edward White, author of "The American Judicial Tradition: Profiles of Leading American Judges” and a Supreme Court scholar at the University of Virginia School of Law, said he thought the legal impact of the administration’s move in Prop. 8 would be “virtually zero.”


    “I really don’t think one should attach any legal significance to this particular intervention,” he said before the brief was released.

    Noting that Obama “been quite late to alter his view on same-sex marriage” -- he did so last May, announcing he supported it -- White thought this was a way to remind everybody that the administration “has now officially changed its mind on the issue.”

    “My takeaway is really that this is a symbolic act on the part of the administration,” he said. “They’re doing it for political currency purposes. The justices are going to understand that’s what it is.”

    William Eskridge, a professor at Yale Law School and a constitutional law expert who has authored many works on legal issues facing same-sex couples, said he didn’t think the brief would “necessarily change any minds” or be “as important for the outcome of the case” as the separate filings this week by about 130 notable Republicans as well as large businesses in support of same-sex marriage.

    Clint Eastwood to Supreme Court: Drop California's ban on same-sex marriage

    Klarman, of Harvard, agreed, saying he thought the brief by the Republicans could influence Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom he considers the swing vote on gay marriage.

    “I think someone like Justice Kennedy … is interested among other things in how much political backlash there would be to a ruling in favor of gay marriage. The fact that there's so many Republicans now committing to support it is highly relevant,” he said.

    “I think it matters that Obama was re-elected," he also noted. "If there were a President Romney who would be committed to opposing the decision then I think, you know, a swing justice might be more hesitant. I think it matters that Obama is president and I think it matters that Obama already came out in favor of this, but I don’t think the brief really adds much information.”

    Though the experts don’t expect the legal briefs to carry much weight among the justices, parties on both sides of the issue were roused by the move.

    ProtectMarriage.com, which brought the legal challenge to keep Prop. 8 on the books after the state of California decided not to defend it, decried the effort, calling it a “frontal assault” on the law by the Solicitor General in an email to supporters.

    The group also said the bid was “a stunning declaration of war against the longstanding meaning of marriage and its obvious ties to society’s interesting in both mothers and fathers raising the next generation.”

    Meanwhile, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the sole sponsor of the challenge to Prop. 8 that also organized the brief by moderate and conservative Republicans as well as Libertarians, welcomed the government to its side.

    “The brief filed by the Solicitor General is a powerful statement that Proposition 8 cannot be squared with the principles of equality upon which this nation was founded,” the group said in a statement. “AFER looks forward to having Solicitor General (Donald) Verrilli and the federal government by our side as we make the case for marriage equality for all before the Supreme Court.”

    Related:

    Once 'inconceivable,' Republican leaders sign pro-gay marriage brief
    Widow to Supreme Court: Same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional
    US asks Supreme Court to strike down law denying benefits to same-sex couples

  • Clint Eastwood to Supreme Court: Drop California's ban on same-sex marriage

    /

    Actor and producer Clint Eastwood is seen in September 2012 in Westwood, Calif.

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Clint Eastwood has joined about 130 self-described moderate and conservative Republicans in signing a brief to the Supreme Court arguing against California’s Proposition 8, which bans marriage for same-sex couples.

    Former Bush administration officials, including Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of Defense, and Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor and Secretary of Homeland Security, also were among those who signed the brief, which argued that the Constitution prohibits denying same-sex couples access to the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage, according to a copy of the brief released Thursday by the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

    Breitbart.com, which first reported that Eastwood had signed the brief, said he was a "long-time Republican with strong libertarian leanings," who had "become increasingly vocal politically." Eastwood's conversation with an empty chair representing President Barack Obama on the final day of the Republican convention briefly became a major topic on the campaign last fall.

    The nation’s high court will hear arguments in the case on March 26. Thursday is the last day for briefs to be filed in the case, and officials told NBC's Pete Williams that the Justice Department will urge the court to approve gay marriage in California.

    Six other former governors, including Jon Huntsman of Utah and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, and ten former and two current members of Congress signed the brief, which was organized by AFER. Members of the George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain presidential campaigns also signed.

    In the brief, the group said it was better for children to grow up with married parents, and that legalizing same-sex marriage would ease couples’ access to benefits and rights afforded to heterosexual couples but would pose “no credible threat to religious freedom or to the institution of religious marriage.”

    They noted that many of those adding their names did not previously support same-sex marriage. But since a number of states have allowed gays and lesbians to wed, they, "like many Americans, have reexamined the evidence and their own positions and have concluded that there is no legitimate, fact-based reason for denying same-sex couples the same recognition in law that is available to opposite-sex couples."

    Rather, they “concluded that marriage is strengthened, not undermined, and its benefits and importance to society as well as the support and stability it gives to children and families promoted, not undercut, by providing access to civil marriage for same-sex couples,” the brief continued.

    Some on the list included who have had a change of heart on the issue include Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for California governor in 2010, and David Frum, a special assistant to Bush from 2001 to 2002.

    Once 'inconceivable,' Republican leaders sign pro-gay marriage brief


    Numerous briefs have been filed in support of Prop. 8 by 20 states, religious groups, academics and legal scholars, as well as many against by businesses, labor unions, veterans, California plus thirteen states as well as the District of Columbia, and gay rights and religious groups.

    National Football League players, Chris Kluwe, a punter for the Minnesota Vikings, and Bredon Ayanbadejo, a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, also filed a separate brief in the case that was released Thursday afternoon. The pair has been outspoken supporters of gay rights.

    The California Supreme Court said in 2008 that the state had to allow same-sex marriage, and for a short period, some 18,000 same-sex couples wed in the Golden State. But with the passage of Prop. 8 later that same year, gays and lesbians were later prohibited from marrying. Various lower courts said the law was unconstitutional, with the most recent one determining such a fundamental right like marriage, that gays and lesbians had once enjoyed, could not be taken away.

    The Supreme Court will also hear arguments in late March on Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage. The Obama administration has encouraged the justices to strike down Section 3. In its argument, the administration noted that Proposition 8 and similar measures in other states were evidence that anti-gay discrimination remained a major problem.

    Related:

    Widow to Supreme Court: Same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional
    US asks Supreme Court to strike down law denying benefits to same-sex couples
    Supreme Court to take up same-sex marriage issue

     

  • Eagle Scout son of lesbian moms: Boy Scouts must end gay discrimination

    MSNBC's Thomas Roberts speaks with Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, son of a same-sex couple, who is backing efforts to reinstate a lesbian den mother ousted from the Boy Scouts of America.

    By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

     

    The Boy Scouts of America opens its annual meeting on Wednesday, and among the headlines coming out of it will be one the organization has grappled with over the years: gay membership.

    The issue has come to the forefront again with the ouster of den leader Jennifer Tyrrell, who was removed from her position with her son’s Tiger Cubs pack in April because she is gay. An online petition to reinstate her has received more than 285,000 signatures, and Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, the son of a lesbian couple, handed it over Wednesday morning to officials gathering for the two-day meeting in Kissimmee, Fla.


    Wahls told msnbc.com that he delivered the three boxes bearing the petition to senior members of the Scouts leadership and a spokesman, wearing his Eagle Scout uniform. He said it was an "unprecedented" and "honest" conversation -- "one scout to another" -- that lasted about 20 minutes.

    "It’s really, I think, a very positive step in the right direction,” said Wahls, 20, of Iowa City, Iowa, who became known nationally after speaking before his home state's legislature in 2011 about having gay parents. "We’re not trying to force the Boy Scouts of America to change its policy, we want the Boy Scouts to change of its own volition.”

    Tyrrell served as den leader in her Bridgeport, Ohio, community for less than a year. The then 32-year-old stay-at-home mother of four said she agreed to take up the role on the day she signed up her son, Cruz Burns, for the troop. She had concerns about the Boy Scouts' policy against homosexuals, but a Cubmaster said that they wouldn’t have problem locally.

    “The best time in our lives we’ve had in the last year, it’s gone … because we can’t be scouts any more. I can’t stop crying,” she told msnbc.com in late April, noting that she would continue to push for a change to the policy to include all Americans. “… because we’re just people …gay people who love their kids.”

    The Boy Scouts’ policy became a focus of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, when the justices sided with the organization in a lawsuit involving a former Assistant Scoutmaster who was gay, citing the protections of the First Amendment.

    Boy Scouts spokesman Deron Smith said in an email that accepting the petition was not on the agenda, but scouting officials would take it in a private meeting “out of respect for different viewpoints.”

    “Scouting maintains that its youth development program is not the appropriate environment to introduce or discuss, in any way, same-sex attraction. Parents and caregivers should have the right to decide when and how to discuss this issue with their children,” he wrote in an email statement to msnbc.com.

    Smith said there were no plans to change the organization’s stance.

    Fernando Leon/Getty Images

    Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout who is the son of a lesbian couple, speaks during the annual GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Awards in New York City on March 24.

    “Throughout the years some have expressed their disagreement with this policy. The BSA is a voluntary, private organization that sets policies that allow it to most effectively accomplish its mission. Its policies are not meant as a social commentary outside of the Scouting program,” he said.

    'A new era for scouting'
    But Wahls said it was time for the Boy Scouts to move forward, citing the changes in the U.S. military which ended its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that had barred gay people from serving if they acknowledged their sexual orientation. He said they are in communication with people within the organization already advocating for change.

    "It is really my sense that, you know, as we do see this changing of the guard especially under the (Scouts) new leadership … I do believe this is the beginning of a new era for scouting," he said. "Now, how long it takes for this new era to really kick in is unfortunately kind of up in the air at this point, but I do believe we will see this change a little bit sooner than a lot of people expect."

    Like Jennifer Tyrrell, Wahls' mothers had served in leadership roles in the local Scouts in the Wisconsin town of Marshfield, but unlike her, they never had to deal with the Boy Scouts' executives who removed the Ohio mother from her post.

    Noting that supportive comments for the petition came from current and former scouts and leaders, Wahls said: “I’m a part of this not because I’m opposed to the Scouts, but in fact because I support the Scouts.”

    "It was a very important part of my life … the Boy Scouts really reinforced the values that my moms taught me," he added. "The Scouts are right on literally thousands of things, and they’re only wrong on one. So I really do hope that they can change this policy so they can go back to having that perfect scorecard."

  • Colorado women accused of faking hate crime, deny charges

    By msnbc.com staff

    DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. -- Two women who claimed that someone painted the words "Kill the Gay" on their garage door in Parker are now charged with spray painting the phrase themselves, NBC station KUSA of Denver reported.


    The women deny the charge.

    The Douglas County Sheriff's Office arrested Aimee Whitchurch, 37, and Christel Conklin, 29. Both face charges of criminal mischief and false reporting. Whitchurch also faces a charge of forgery, KUSA reported. Each is free on $1,000 bail.

    The women reported the incident Oct. 28, saying they were victims of a hate crime.

    When deputies arrived at the home on Lark Water Lane, they found the words in red spray paint on the garage door. The next day, investigators went back to the home after receiving a report that a noose was left on the front door handle.

    The women told investigators that they felt the incidents were retaliation for issues they were having with their homeowner's association and their neighbors.

    Investigators now say they believe Whitchurch and Conklin spray painted their own garage and placed the noose themselves.

    On Thursday, Whitchurch told KDVR of Denver they now suspect a former roommate falsely told the FBI that they had painted the words.

    More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook